Wow! That is all I can say to describe my feelings regarding the SAIMC 2015 Gala Dinner. The venue was fantastic, the food fabulous and the quality of the guests and speakers phenomenal. I only had compliments from the guests I spoke to, even when I pushed them to advise me on what we can improve on for next year. This premier event on the C&I industry calendar has now been firmly entrenched, with the bar being raised every year for the past three years…next will be even better, we already have ideas to keep things fresh in 2016. Those who were too late to get tickets or could not attend, I am sure you will see from the coverage of the event on the pages of this magazine, that you really missed out. I hope you can join us next year… tickets will be limited to 250 guests once again.
I will touch on a bit of what I spoke about for the benefit of those who could not attend and elaborate on some items where time constraints limited its coverage at the event. I started off by reminding our guests of the objectives of the SAIMC. The SAIMC aims to provide our members with an organisation that is:
• Globally recognised.
• Able to provide a large database of expertise.
• A catalyst between industry and education.
• Ensuring that the C&I industry’s best interests are represented.
• Striving for formal recognition of C&I as the 10th engineering discipline by ECSA.
• Keeping members up to date.
All of these objectives are to ensure that all categories of our membership are successful.
Our voluntary human resources in the form of councillors, branch committee members and the patron members who provide significant funding to enable the SAIMC to pursue its objectives were recognised and thanked for their contributions.
Engagements with tertiary institutions included the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and SAIMC collaboration with respect to the establishment of The Institute for Process Automation (Systems Engineering) at UJ. This has been identified as one of the flagship initiatives that would propel UJ into the top 3% of global universities from its current position of being in the top 4%. The SAIMC is currently advising UJ of the requirements of industry for such an institute, both from a degree point of view as well as from a sort course point of view. The SAIMC will be canvassing the opinion of key stakeholders in the C&I industry in the next months to ensure all needs are met. The ISA short courses are proposed to be run at UJ as well.
The working relationship with the University of Pretoria (UP) continues to get stronger with the SAIMC Control Laboratory still being of great value to the students. The SAIMC now has a standing slot where the president gives the final year electronic engineering class a lecture on the C&I industry and their prospects in this exciting field. Furthermore, this year the SAIMC has been invited to judge the final year projects and Oratile Sematle the current SAIMC Vice-President, from SASOL, will be one of the judges on 6 November 2015.
The SAIMC continues to support the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) with their FIRST Lego League (FLL) and FIRST Technology Challenge (FTC) programmes to get school children involved in robotics. This should make the children realise that maths and science is interesting and hence they should consider a career in the exciting field of engineering. The Africa championships of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) programmes were held at the Africa Automation Fair in May 2015, and was a resounding success with teams from around the world competing. The FIRST programmes, particularly the FTC still require significant funding to accommodate all potential teams. Please email me on how you can support this great initiative. TUT is a section 18A registered organisation with SARS, so a portion of the donation is tax deductible by both individuals and companies.
Our engagement with ECSA continues, particularly with regards to us being recognised as the 10th engineering discipline. Once again this year the SAIMC was invited to participate in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Engineering Week, which was held at the Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT) in Durban, during the last week of September 2015. The SAIMC invited the KZN Science Centre to participate on our stand and once again it was a resounding success like the UJ event of 2014. Prof. Ralph Naidoo of MUT stated: “I must advise that the SAIMC stand has become the centre of attraction – a big thank you to Mr Rwafa (our lecturer), Mr Dlamini (our lab demonstrator) and our students Mr Mahumane, Mr Nyandeni and Mr Dlamini.” We look forward to participating in next year’s event and attracting even more school kids to engineering.
Our Durban branch in collaboration with MUT will be hosting the International Process Automation & Control Conference from 13-15 April 2016 in Durban. This conference provides a platform to showcase and establish the current state of industrial process automation and control and renewable energy systems, both in South Africa and internationally. Presentations covering the aforementioned topics and allied fields of activity, either of a research, theoretical or application nature, are sought from academic and industrial practitioners. This is a massive achievement and we encourage your active participation in this event. The first call for papers is already out.
Our SAIMC Technical Committees at the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) have been very busy this past year. These are TC065 (IEC TC031 mirror committee) and TC165 (IEC TC065 mirror committee). At least four standards have been approved and two are currently being voted on. The list of standards to be adopted this year are:
• IEC61158 – Industrial communication networks
• IEC60654 – Industrial-process measurement and control equipment
• IEC62381 – Automation systems in the process industry – Factory acceptance test (FAT), site acceptance test (SAT), and site integration test (SIT)
• IEC62382 – Control systems in the process industry – Electrical and instrumentation loop check
• IEC62337 – Commissioning of electrical, instrumentation and control systems in the process industry
• IEC61131 – Programmable Controllers
• IEC60534 – Industrial-process control valves
• IEC62541 – OPC Unified Architecture
• IEC62264 – Enterprise-control system integration
• IEC61513 – Nuclear power plants – Instrumentation and control important to safety
• IEC61512 – Batch control
• IEC60584 – Thermocouples – Part 1: EMF specifications and tolerances
• IEC61326 – Electrical equipment for measurement, control and laboratory use – EMC requirements
• IEC62061 – Insulating liquids – Determination of acidity
We encourage more members out there to give input into these standards being adopted for use in SA.
You all will be aware of the huge success the African Automation Fair 2015 (AAF) was, with a 74.4% increase in visitor numbers (almost 4500) over the 2013 event and the high quality of visitors at the show. This made for very happy visitors and exhibitors. Some comments from the post show survey were:
“The audience is very high quality, much better than last time.” [Edwin Brown, Vepac]
“I would not miss this show for anything in the future; I think we have generated enough leads to probably keep us busy for up to two years.” [Johan Pretorius, Oculus]
“I reckon the audience is 95%+ of people who are relevant to what we are doing.” [Loraine Lundall, FCE Technologies].
The success of this AAF has attracted international interest and the breaking news at the Gala Dinner was that British based Reed Exhibitions has decided to acquire the show through their local company. Carol Weaving, managing director, Thebe Reed Exhibitions commented: “Africa Automation Fair has established itself as the industry’s leading event with an unparalleled reputation for delivering quality and innovation. We are delighted to be welcoming event founder Hanli Kritzinger to the Thebe Reed Exhibitions team and look forward to taking the event to even greater heights.” We as the SAIMC welcome this foreign investment into our industry and believe they can take the event to new heights in 2017. Hanli and her team from élan will still be very involved in the 2017 event which will take place from 13-15 June. We are looking forward to working with the new team of Thebe Reed and élancommunications.
The other first time announcement at the event was the cooperation agreement between Profibus International South Africa (PISA) and the SAIMC, where the SAIMC will assist PISA with knowledge-sharing both through the SAIMC standards committee and the education and training committee. The SAIMC will also assist with the country-wide revival of PISA activities by actively marketing PISA activities and inviting PISA to speak at the various SAIMC branch technical evenings during 2016. We are excited about the impact Profinet will have on the automation space and particularly with regards to Industry 4.0 which could assist SA with low cost production.
As usual, please mail me your thoughts on [email protected]. I thank you all for taking the time to read this column.
Working together, achieving more,
Vinesh, President
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